Introduction to the Divine Art of Chemistry

and their transmutation into one another by nature in their mines, and about the diverse mineral places in which they are generated, although the place in common should be called one, and according to the requirement of its proportional subject, namely insofar as they are substance, it shows to the operation of nature only, whatever things have been said speculatively, in general and in special, and declaring every operation of nature in them, not applying it to the operation of the art, since this is not of its consideration. Whence someone says:

This art is desired by many, but to these it is given:
Whom God accepts, while he accepts with such a gift.
Nor should you wonder that such things are said under an enigma,
Lest they become vile, I wish these to lie hidden.

The art of alchemy, however, since it is subalternated to it, as regards this part of minerals, receives all these things believed from it, and places a further investigation upon those same things, and a higher scrutiny, and penetrates even to the ultimate depths and first roots of those things, with an ultimate de-articulation of the operation of nature in them, so that of the mysteries of nature in the generation and transformation of the aforementioned, nothing may remain, when it is known according to their hidden and manifest aspects. And this consideration is entirely necessary to the art of alchemy, because without it, it is impossible to know whether one can follow nature or not. Having had this consideration, because it seemed to him that it is possible to follow nature, he devised with human ingenuity, wonderful and divine at the same time, to follow nature in their transmutation. And such sciences are about things and their accidents and properties. But the mining art, which digs for iron, considers the places in which it is generated and found, and its selection and purification from its dross by fires, and its goodness and malice; but it does not consider from what it is, and how much it is, and what kind it is, nor from what principles it is, nor the method of its mixing and generation, since this is of the consideration of the superior sciences.